Thanks for the reply, Jonno. I just would have thought that all restrictions/options would have opened up over the years (such as option for uncompressed) as the tech advanced, but I was wrong apparently. People were just satisfied with not-the-best results when it came to capping SD analog I guess (largely thanks to a lot of ill advice out there, which I'll go into toward the bottom of this post).

Jonno said:

it sounds like the work you're doing is considerably more interesting than most of our existing clients!

I'm just wanting to be able to confidently retire a number of VHS tapes I have from film work I did years back (transfers to VHS), to save space. Nothing really interesting I would say, especially as I'm just following what a number of people on the net came up with in regards to technique. (I'm actually not very savvy at all when it comes to knowing what makes up video signals and such!)

Jonno said:

Shame you're (presumably) not in the UK

Correct. I'm in the US, my gear NTSC of course.

I am now kinda set on wanting to get/try the Intensity Pro, but as of this morning my finances may be taking a sudden hit (might have to move!), and may curtail my plans on that. Gotta see what goes down.

And slightly on this whole topic, I kind of shuddered a few times last night while looking for info, at re-reading a lot of the "wise words" from over the years on 'net forums in regards to capping VHS. Seeing things like "VHS is so low res that you can capture at 640x240 without worrying about losing any information." Ugh, how totally wrooong that is! To think that people did such captures and erased their valuable video afterward because they believed things like that, that there was no more quality that could be gained. :( And it seems that very few people have picked up multi-cap-averaging for their more valuable video, which is sad because it really is the way to go! Amazingly better results (but more work) than a single capture! (on consumer-ish gear). And averaging is especially the way to go for LD capturing as you don't have to worry about the added-frames issue or adding wear to your master tape. Alright, shutting up now on that. :)

Thanks for the replies. I guess I can now only hope that I'm not going to end up as money strapped as I'm fearing, and if/when I get the Intensity Pro, I'll post some comparisons to my PDI for those interested.